


On Eastmuir Crag (Part 1)

by Zdenka



Series: On Eastmuir Crag (Purimgifts 2016) [1]
Category: English and Scottish Popular Ballads - Francis James Child, Kemp Owyne (Traditional Ballad)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 14:03:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6287488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/pseuds/Zdenka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isabel displeases her stepmother and undergoes a dreadful transformation. (This is the first part of a two-part story.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Eastmuir Crag (Part 1)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darthjamtart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthjamtart/gifts).



> The second part of this story will be revealed tomorrow.
> 
> The text of the Child ballad "Kemp Owyne" may be found [here](http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/child-ballads/ch034.htm), or in a modernized version [here](https://mainlynorfolk.info/frankie.armstrong/songs/kempowyne.html).

From the time Isabel was young, when she sang, the birds would come to her hand and the grasses would sway gently although there was no wind. Her father smiled when he saw it, both sad and proud. “Just like your mother,” he would say. “You have this gift from her.” Isabel did not remember her mother well; when she tried, she could only find cloudy memories of gentle hands stroking her hair and a beautiful voice. But she tried to remember the way her mother used to sing, since her songs seemed to make the people around her happy.

When Isabel was older, she learned to weave and sew. When she sang over her weaving, guiding the shuttle in time with her melody, then the crops grew well and the rain came in season. When she sang over her embroidery, twining the different colors together like voices joining in a duet, then the animals gave birth easily, and there were plenty of fish in the river, and everyone seemed pleased.

But when Isabel was sixteen years old, her father married again. The first time her father’s wife heard her singing over her loom, her face twisted as if she had bitten into something sour. “You are never to do that again, Isabel!” she said. And then she took a knife and cut the half-finished weaving to pieces. She never seemed to like Isabel after that, although Isabel obeyed all her commands as quickly as she could and only sang very quietly to herself when no one else could hear. Isabel did not want her father to be troubled. She thought it must be her fault somehow if her father’s wife did not like her, and so she said nothing of it to him, but only tried harder to please her stepmother.

But one day at last her father’s wife called to her, as she often did. “Isabel, Isabel!”

“Yes, lady?” Isabel said with a respectful curtsey.

“Come with me and carry my cloak. We are going to walk by the sea.”

“Yes, lady,” Isabel said again.

And they walked along the rocks by the sea, until at last her father’s wife said, “We have come far enough. Set down my cloak.” And Isabel did.

The lady pulled out her kerchief, one that she had woven on her own loom. “You have not stopped your singing, Isabel,” she said, twisting the kerchief between her fingers. “And I thought when I came here that I would be the only woman of power in this land. I will not share what is mine!”

“I do not understand, lady,” Isabel faltered.

And then the lady twined her kerchief between her fingers once, twice, and thrice, weaving it in and out like thread on the loom. “No more shall you cause me grief,” she said. “Isabel, go and jump in the sea!”

Isabel opened her mouth to say that of course she would not do such a thing, but her limbs would not obey her. Against her will, she took a step, and another, and a third—and then she was falling off the rocks into the sea. She hit the water, and then her body _twisted_ in and around itself like the lady’s kerchief. She tried to scream, but her voice would not obey her.

And then somehow she struggled her way back to the surface, but her body felt wrong. When she looked before her, instead of her own hands and arms, Isabel saw the scaled limbs of some loathsome beast, with long sharp claws. When she looked behind her, she saw another pair of scaled legs and a thick finned tail, and her hair had tumbled loose from its snood and trailed out behind her, longer and thicker than it ever was. When she looked at her reflection in the water, she saw a snarling scaled snout and a jaw bristling with long, sharp teeth. She tried to speak, to ask some question, but her voice was so hoarse and rough that it frightened her.

“Do you see what you are now, Isabel?” the lady said. “You are an ugly beast, and you should not live among gentlefolk. Now hear my curse: You shall dwell on the Eastmuir Crag and never be released, until the king’s son, Kemp Owyne, come to the crag and kiss you thrice.” She laughed. “But I do not think a king’s son will ever kiss a hideous monster, and if you call for him to come to you, I think he will slay you, like the brave hero he is! Now go, and swim to the crag.”

And Isabel swam. At last she pulled herself, shivering and weary, onto the rocks of Eastmuir Crag.


End file.
